It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
DENIS DIDEROTOnly the bad man is alone.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
-
-
Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
DENIS DIDEROT -
My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
DENIS DIDEROT -
For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT -
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You have to make it happen.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
DENIS DIDEROT -
A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
DENIS DIDEROT -
A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it. Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
DENIS DIDEROT -
No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT -
When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There are cats and cats.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
DENIS DIDEROT